人民日报报道。及南华早报評论。

苏联想毁灭中国的三个城市，请美国保持中立，但美国反对，并威胁：如果苏联动手，美国就会用核武器毁掉苏联130个城市。苏联害怕了，收手了。

在此之前的5年，美国邀请苏联参与，一起炸毁中国还在建设中的核武器基地。苏联反对了。

http://t.cn/zQPmsER

Nixon intervention saved China from Soviet nuclear attack.

SCMP, Mark O’Neil, 12 May 2010.

Mao Zedong moves to Wuhan , Lin Biao to Suzhou and the general staff to a nuclear bombproof bunker in the western hills outside Beijing. The country's warplanes are scattered around northern China, runways at the main airports blocked and workers given weapons to shoot Soviet airmen when they land.

It is October 1969: China is preparing for a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. Lin, second to Mao, orders 940,000 soldiers, 4,000 planes and 600 vessels to scatter from their bases and the transfer of major archives from Beijing to the southwest. Then US president Richard Nixon intervenes. Secretary of state Henry Kissinger tells the Soviet ambassador in Washington that as soon as the Soviets set off their first missile against China, the US will launch nuclear missiles at 130 Soviet cities.

This is the dramatic account in an official magazine of the closest China has come to a nuclear war. The latest issue of Historical Reference, published by the People's Daily, mouthpiece of the Communist Party, describes in detail the five occasions in the post-1949 period when China was threatened by nuclear attack. It is a rare account by an official publication of the most dangerous moments of the People's Republic. They are a far cry from the nuclear security summit in mid-April in Washington, where President Hu Jintao was received as an honoured guest and key interlocutor.

Of the five nuclear threats, four came from the United States and one from the Soviet Union. The most serious came in 1969 after military clashes in March on Zhenbao Island - Damansky in Russian - on the Ussuri River, Heilongjiang , that marks the border in China's northeast. On March 2, Chinese troops ambushed Soviet border guards; they retaliated on March 15 by bombarding Chinese military concentrations and storming the island. According to Chinese figures, 58 Soviets were killed and 97 injured.

The conflict provoked an outpouring of official anger on both sides. In China, 150 million soldiers and civilians took part in anti-Soviet demonstrations; the official press said that it was time to 'defeat the new tsar' and prepared the public for a war, including one with nuclear weapons. It warned that they would kill any foreign troops who encroached on Chinese territory.

The Soviet government organised huge anti-Chinese protests in Moscow; they surrounded the Chinese embassy and burnt cars in front of it. The Soviets moved thousands of troops to its far east and prepared missiles armed with nuclear warheads. It told its allies in eastern Europe that it planned a nuclear attack 'to wipe out the Chinese threat and get rid of this modern adventurer'. On August 20, the Soviet ambassador in Washington told Kissinger of their plans and asked the US to remain neutral. Wishing to stop the attack, the White House leaked the story to The Washington Post. Its edition of August 28 reported that the Soviet Union planned to launch missiles with hundreds of tonnes of nuclear material on Beijing, Changchun , Anshan and its missile-launch centres of Jinquan, Xichang and Lop Nor. In late September and October, war fever in China reached its peak. Lin ordered the army to move from its bases and residents of major cities to dig shelters and store food. In the final step before the attack, Moscow sought the opinion of Washington. Nixon saw the Soviet Union as his main threat and wanted a strong China against it; he feared the effect of a nuclear war on 250,000 US troops in the Asia-Pacific. On October 15, Kissinger told the Soviet ambassador in Washington that the US would not be neutral and would attack Soviet cities in retaliation. Bluff or not, it worked. 'The Americans betrayed us,' the ambassador said. They called off the attack on October 20 and began negotiations with China in Beijing. The crisis was over.

The American refusal was in part revenge for what happened in reverse five years before - a Soviet refusal to participate in an attack on China's nascent nuclear programme.

It was in January 1955 that Mao decided to develop China's first nuclear bomb. This involved an enormous investment in money, materials and technology for a country still recovering from nearly 20 years of war. Beijing selected Lop Nor in the desert of southeast Xinjiang as the centre of its nuclear programme, mainly because of its remoteness and distance from US and Taiwanese airbases in the Pacific.

U-2 spy planes from Taiwan flew at high altitude over western and central China and took photographs of Lop Nor and other nuclear installations. In January 1961, the US Pacific Command said China would explode its first nuclear device by the end of 1962 and a nuclear bomb by 1965.

President John Kennedy said in October 1961 that, armed with its nuclear bomb, China would swallow up Southeast Asia. The US wanted to attack China's nuclear installations before it developed a bomb and saw the Sino-Soviet split in 1961 as the perfect opportunity for a joint operation. On July 14, 1963, an American emissary in Moscow gave a detailed presentation of China's nuclear programme and proposed a joint operation to stop it. But Soviet president Nikita Khruschev said the programme posed no threat.